Category Archives: Government

Why Immigration Policy Changes Probably Will Impact Workers Compensation

Posted on January 30, 2017 by Jon Rehm

In theory, the changes to immigration policy proposed by President Trump shouldn’t impact workers compensation in Nebraska. Workers compensation laws are state laws and Nebraska, like most states, awards workers compensation benefits regardless of immigration status.

But theory is one things and reality is another.

Mike Elk of Payday Report recently ran an article detailing that workplace deaths among Latinos were the highest in 2015 than they had been since 2007. This spike was attributed in part to aggressive immigration enforcement by the Obama administration which immigrant advocates believed made workers afraid to speak out about working conditions over fear of deportation.

During the Obama administration tougher immigration policies were at least coupled with tougher and even innovative workplace safety enforcement by OSHA. In the Trump era, workplace safety enforcement is expected to be curtailed and new OSHA rules are poised to be rolled back.

Immigration and workers compensation is often thought of in the context of Mexicans and central Americans working in industries like meatpacking and construction. This is a misconception, the meatpacking industry in Nebraska and elsewhere employs an uncounted but significant number of Somali workers. Somalis are one of seven nationalities banned from entering the United States under President Trump’s order. Ironically Somalis were recruited heavily into meatpacking work after raids during the Bush administration lead to the deportation of Latino meatpacking workers. Somalis had refugee status so there were few questions about their immigration status or eligibility to work legally. Under the new executive order, their immigration status is less secure and they may be less likely to speak out about working conditions.

A smaller but growing number of Cubans are coming to Nebraska for meatpacking work as well. Like Somalis, Cubans are deemed to be refugees so their ability to work lawfully is not a question for employers. However in the waning days of Obama administration, President Obama ended automatic refugee status for Cubans in an effort to normalize relationship with the Castro regime. There was little public outcry over this order like there was for the so-called Muslim Ban. However because of an executive order, Cuban nationals working in Nebraska may be less inclined to speak out about working conditions or claim workers compensation benefits due to newfound uncertainty over their immigration status.

Workplace Safety Rules Could Be Reversed via Congressional Review Act

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Jon Rehm

In 2001, President George W. Bush, a Republican, overturned an Occupational Safety and Health Administration ergonomics rule designed to prevent repetitive stress injuries that was implemented by President Bill Clinton’s Labor Department, as he was Bush’s Democratic predecessor.

Around 16 years later, history seems poised to repeat itself.

A slew of workplace safety regulations regarding beryllium exposure, reporting of injuries, mine safety, and chemical storage implemented by President Barack Obama’s Department of Labor seemed poised for reversal by President Donald Trump’s administration that is eager to rollback Obama-era regulations through the Congressional Review Act.

The Congressional Review Act provides Congress a way to disapprove any regulation within 60 days of it being deemed final. But as pointed out in an explainer piece from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, Congress has 60 legislative days to disapprove a regulation. Sixty legislative days could be six to seven months in real time because of frequent congressional recesses. The act also restarts the 60-day clock for final rules that are implemented within the last 60 days of the previous legislative session. Heritage estimates that rules finalized back to June 3, 2016, could be subject to review.

Supporters of Obama-era workplace safety rules cannot rely on Senate Democrats to filibuster resolutions under the Congressional Review Act because the legislation does not allow for filibuster and has streamlined procedures for allowing legislation to be pulled out of committee.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the Congressional Review Act doesn’t allow rules to be bundled together. Congress must consider killing each regulation with a single piece of legislation. This feature of the Congressional Review Act may explain why the Clinton ergonomics rule was the only rule actually killed by Congress under the Congressional Rule Act. Finally, the Congressional Review Act prohibits an agency from proposing a substantially similar rule, which could explain why the Obama administration never tried to revive the Clinton-era ergonomics rule.

Labor reporter Mike Elk, editor of Payday Report, is one of the few reporters or writers drawing attention to the fact that Obama-era workplace-safety rules are seriously vulnerable to reversal in the Trump administration. Elk’s reporting details how the chemical industry weakened rules on chemical storage after the West, Texas, chemical explosion and how the Obama administration allowed final approval of the rule to be pushed back to where it would be vulnerable to reversal under the Congressional Review Act. In some fairness, delay by OSHA could partially be explained by budget cuts to the agency by congressional Republicans.

I would encourage our readers to monitor this firm’s social-media feeds and my personal Twitter account, @JonRehmEsq to keep track of Congressional Review Act legislation regarding workplace safety. I would urge readers to contact their members of Congress and express their opposition to any proposed rollbacks of workplace-safety rules.

Workplace Safety and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on January 12, 2017 by Jon Rehm

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking. (Photo by Julian Wasser//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

“It was horrible,” said the woman.

One minute she could see a sanitation worker struggling to climb out of the refuse barrel of a city garbage truck. The next minute mechanical forces pulled him back into the cavernous opening. It looked to her as though the man’s raincoat had snagged on the vehicle, foiling his escape attempt. “His body went in first and his legs were hanging out,” said the eyewitness, who had been sitting at her kitchen table in Memphis, Tennessee, when the truck paused in front of her home. Next, she watched the man’s legs vanish as the motion of the truck’s compacting unit swept the worker toward his death. “The big thing just swallowed him,” she reported.

Unbeknownst to Mrs. C. E. Hinson, another man was already trapped inside the vibrating truck body. Before vehicle driver Willie Crain could react, Echol Cole, age 36, and Robert Walker, age 30, would be crushed to death. Nobody ever identified which one came close to escaping.

The horrific deaths of Cole and Walker on Feb. 1, 1968, set off the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, where 1,300 mostly African-American public employees struck to protest poor working conditions, including the defective garbage truck that crushed Cole and Walker. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech in support of the striking sanitation workers in Memphis the night before he was assassinated.

On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is celebrated as a holiday. But the rightful veneration of Dr. King should not, for the lack of better terms, wrongfully sanitize or whitewash the fact that what he fought for would be opposed by many who invoke his legacy today. The Memphis sanitation strikers are asking for the same thing that striking fast food and service workers are asking for in the Fight for 15 campaign. Most establishment types and so-called moderates in Memphis refused to support the striking sanitation workers. Today’s so-called moderates argue that paying employees a living wage is too radical and counterproductive. History has a way of repeating itself.

Nearly 50 years later, I still represent sanitation workers who are injured from defective equipment. However, bloody crush injuries like the ones that killed Cole and Walker are much less common. Part of the reason for the increase in workplace safety over the last 50 years was the passing of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Dr. King was willing to risk bodily harm and ultimately ended up being killed supporting workers who were protesting unsafe work conditions. The passage of OSHA is a small but important and overlooked part of Dr. King’s legacy. History is repeating itself again as the business establishment applauds the expected rollback of OSHA enforcement under expected future Labor Secretary Andy Puzder.

Dr. King also deserves credit for his role in passing laws like Title VII that prohibited discrimination against African-Americans, which has allowed an increasing number of African-Americans to join the professional class and otherwise realize their potential as human beings. Dr. King’s legacy can also be seen in the expansion of rights for disabled Americans, and the fact that gays and lesbians are able to get married, and the real possibility that Title VII may end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

But by some economic measures, African-Americans are worse off now than they were 40 years ago. This fact can likely be attributed to overall increases in economic inequality over the last 40 years. The U.S. Department of Labor pointed out in a recent study that the gutting of state workers’ compensation laws has exacerbated inequality. Lawyers, legislators, academics and pundits have gradually forgotten about the risks faced by workers like Echol Cole and Robert Walker and how civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. saw the fight for workplace safety as a matter of basic human dignity and integral to the fight for civil rights.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett & Moore and Trucker Lawyers will be closed in observance of the holiday on Monday. We will re-open at 8:30 a.m. Central Time on Tuesday, Jan. 17. We encourage readers to think about Martin Luther King Jr. on the federal holiday and every day and continue to be both motivated and challenged by his words and works.

Chemical Exposure in Chicken Plants

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Jon Rehm

Several members of Congress have written to Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell regarding the danger of the chemical PAA, which is used to sanitize chickens in poultry plants.

According to The Pump Handle blog written by occupational health expert Celeste Monforton, the increase in the use of PAA is linked to the Department of Agriculture’s “modernized inspection” system. Though meatpacking is well known for the prevalence of musculoskeletal injuries, chemical exposure is a less well-known, but similarly serious hazard, to meatpacking workers, which has been recognized by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The hazards of chemical exposure are not limited to meat-processing workers. Chemical exposure fatalities are too common in rural America. Recently, a worker on an industrial cleaning crew in Beatrice, Nebraska, was killed from inhaling industrial cleaning chemicals. In October, a resident of northeast Nebraska was killed after inhaling chemicals from a leak in anhydrous ammonia pipeline. That same month, 125 residents of Atchison, Kansas, sought treatment for inhalation of chlorine gas from an explosion at a distiller.

While chemical exposure can often result in sudden death, ongoing exposure to chemicals can also create injuries that may not be apparent for years after the exposure. Unfortunately, Nebraska limits the ability of workers to recover for such injuries.

The letter about the hazards of PAA was written to outgoing cabinet members. The new Trump administration is expected to have a less-aggressive approach toward regulating the workplace. Hopefully the new administration will take the threat posed by hazardous chemicals in the workplace seriously.

Drug Formularies, Part 2: Pharmacy Benefit Managers and Drug Prices

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Jon Rehm

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch testified before the House Oversight Committee about her company’s increase in the price of life-saving EpiPens by more than 500 percent since 2007

This fall, most Americans were outraged at revelations that the price of life-saving EpiPens had increased by 600 percent since 2007. The anger over the drastic price increase for EpiPens focused attention on the role that pharmacy benefit managers play in the increase of drug prices. Pharmacy benefit managers administer drug formularies, so the use of drug formularies should also be questioned on prescription price control in addition to the question of whether drug formularies shift costs to more expensive treatment.

Pharmacy benefit managers have been praised for helping negotiate drug discounts. However, pharmacy benefit managers have been criticized on the same grounds because their profitability depends in large part on being able to pocket a percentage of the discount that they negotiate. This is a lucrative business. Express Scripts is described by Wall Street-types as a “pure play” pharmacy benefit manager. In the last quarter, Express Scripts made $722.9 million in profit, a 9 percent year-over-year increase.

In addition to being criticized for benefiting from the increase in pharmacy costs, pharmacy benefit managers have also been criticized for having conflicts of interest. Pharmacy benefit managers run drug formularies. However, since pharmacy benefit managers negotiate discounts with specific drug firms, pharmacy benefit managers have an incentive to put those drugs on drug formularies. These types of arrangements have drawn the attention of Preet Bharara, the high-profile United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 2015, Bharara settled a charge against Express Scripts for $45 million. The settlement came after an Express Scripts unit participated in a kickback scheme involving Novartis under the False Claims Act and the Anti-Kickback Statute.

In fairness to pharmacy benefit managers, there may be other factors driving increased prescription prices. Recently, former Democratic presidential candidate and current U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission alleging collusion among pharmaceutical companies in regards to insulin prices. Insulin is a generic drug, and generic are cheaper than so-called brand-name drugs. However, the increase in insulin prices is far from the sole example of drastic increases in generic drugs.

In 2015, the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) released a report on prescription drug prices in workers’ compensation. On page 36 of this report, NCCI pointed out that four of the 10 drugs most responsible for the increase in drug prices were generics. In 2014, the price of generic Oxycodone-Acetaminophen rose 35 percent, Oxycodone’s price rose 60 percent, the price of generic muscle relaxer Baclofen rose 86 percent, and the price of generic Morphine Sulfate ER rose by 25 percent.

There is strong evidence that pharmacy benefit managers do little to control prescription drug prices. There is also strong evidence that pharmacy benefit managers benefit from increases in drug prices. If advocates of workers’ compensation reform want to expand the use of drug formularies, they need to explain to policy makers how the pluses of pharmacy benefit managers outweigh the myriad problems related to pharmacy benefit managers.

More Takeaways from the Demise of the Oklahoma Option in Workers’ Compensation

Posted on December 8, 2016 by Jon Rehm

The Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the so-called “Oklahoma Option” in Vasquez v. Dillard’s was one of the biggest events in the world of workers’ compensation. Vasquez represents a growing trend by advocates for injured workers recognizing that workers’ compensation is a matter of constitutional law. But the Vasquez decision is important for other reasons.

Opt-Out is Still Viable

Though some commentators declared the defeat of the Oklahoma option was the death of opt-out, many justices on the Oklahoma Supreme Court who overturned the Oklahoma option would disagree.

A concurring opinion contrasted the Oklahoma opt-out system with the Texas opt-out system. In Texas, employers are not required to have or “subscribe” to workers’ compensation. But if Texas employers do not subscribe to workers’ compensation, injured Texas employees can sue their employer in tort with all affirmative defenses stripped away. This encourages employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance. Nebraska has a similar law for agricultural employers who are exempt from having to carry workers’ compensation.

Oklahoma’s “opt-out” created separate workers’ compensation systems: the state system under the Administrative Workers’ Compensation Act (AWCA) or the private systems under the Oklahoma Employee Injury Benefit Act (OEIBA), where employees were eligible for the same benefits but where employers could draft their own rules for eligibility. Regardless of whether an employee was covered under the AWCA or the OEIBA, employers still had to be covered under one system or another, and employees could not sue their employer in tort for work injuries. What doomed the Oklahoma option was the fact that unfair procedures under the OEIBA created separate but unequal workers’ compensation systems.

The contrast between the now defunct Oklahoma option and the still-viable Texas opt-out system was reinforced when the Vasquez court rejected Dillard’s argument that Vasquez’s claim was pre-empted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) law. Under the Oklahoma option, plans under the OEIBA were to be governed by the ERISA law. However, since OEIBA served as workers’ compensation and ERISA plans that serve as workers’ compensation plans do not pre-empt state workers’ compensation laws, the OEIBA was not pre-empted by federal law. In contrast, state law claims against employers on disability insurance plans who are “nonsubscribers” in Texas are pre-empted by ERISA.

Few, If Any States, Are Going to Implement the Oklahoma Option

The Oklahoma option was struck down on equal-protection grounds based on the Oklahoma state constitution. Most other states have similar provisions in their state constitutions. In Nebraska, that provision is found at Article III, Section 18 of our state constitution. This provision concerns itself with disparate treatment in much the same manner as does the language of the 14^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits a state from making or enforcing any law that denies any person within its jurisdiction “the equal protection of the laws.” Distinctive Printing & Packaging Co. v. Cox, 232 Neb. 846, 443 N.W.2d 566 (1989). Even in a state without an equal protection clause in the state constitution, separate but unequal workers’ compensation systems could be likely be struck down on equal-protection grounds under the U.S. Constitution.

Injured Workers Are a Protected Class

Injured workers are sometimes subject to retaliation for bringing workers’ compensation claims. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court distinguished “discrimination” or “protected status” from “retaliation” or “protected activity” cases under Title VII and held that there was a higher burden of proof for employees bringing a retaliation case than for an employee bringing a discrimination case. However, if injured workers are thought of as a protected class, then discrimination in the form of termination should be thought of as a form of discrimination, and those claims should be subject to a more relaxed burden of proof than required in the Nassar case.

Why Due Process Matters in Workers’ Compensation

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Jon Rehm

Two recent decisions from the state supreme courts in Oklahoma and Florida point out that how an injured worker gets workers’ compensation benefits is as important as how much an employee can receive in benefits for a work injury. In the parlance of constitutional law, the how a worker receives benefits is a termed “due process.”

Oklahoma – In Vasquez v. Dillard’s, the Oklahoma Supreme Court found the so-called “Oklahoma option” violated the equal protection clause of the state’s constitution. The Oklahoma option allowed employers to create their own workers’ compensation benefit plans under the Oklahoma Employee Injury Benefit Act (OEIBA) so long as they offered the same benefits as under the state workers’ compensation program. The problem that the Oklahoma Supreme Court had with “Oklahoma option” was that employers were allowed to design plans with procedures that made it more difficult for injured workers to collect benefits than if they were in the state system. In essence, the Oklahoma State Legislature had created separate but unequal workers’ compensation systems for employees injured on the job in that state, which was a violation of the equal-protection clause of the state constitution. But the deeper reason why the Oklahoma option was overturned was that it denied due process to workers who were covered under the OEIBA.

Florida – In Castellanos v. Next Door Company, the Florida Supreme Court struck down attorney fee limits in workers’ compensation cases on due process grounds under the U.S. and Florida constitutions. The Florida court found that fee caps deterred employees from bringing claims because they would be unable to find attorneys. The court also found that fee caps encouraged employers to wrongfully deny claims because workers would be unable to find lawyers to challenge denied claims. Though Castellanos wasn’t an equal protection case like Vasquez, the Florida court pointed out that employers faced no limits on how much they paid their attorneys. Fee caps for employees only created a situation where employees and employers had unequal protections under Florida’s workers’ compensation law.

Vasquez and Castellanos challenged and overturned state laws. But there are other ways for employees to challenge unfair denials of workers’ compensation benefits besides overturning state laws. In the Brown v. Cassens Transportation cases, a group of injured workers in Michigan used a civil RICO statute (anti-racketeering law) to challenge how their employer, the employer’s claims administrator, and a defense medical examiner worked together to undermine their workers’ compensation claims. In Brown, the U.S. 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals recognized that since employees gave up their right to a tort suit under Michigan law to receive certain workers’ compensation benefits, injured workers had a constitutionally protected property interest in both the receipt of workers’ compensation benefits and their claims for workers’ compensation benefits and that employer had conspired unlawfully to deny those benefits.

The court in Brown also recognized that workers’ compensation was the exclusive remedy for workplace injuries in Michigan, which is another reason why workers’ compensation benefits were constitutionally protected. The state supreme courts in Florida and Oklahoma also cited the exclusive remedy provisions of their state workers’ compensation acts to support their findings that state laws violated due process and equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitution.

Department of Labor Weighs In on New Age of Salary Servitude for ‘Executives’

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Roger Moore

Most of the U.S. workforce has the right, provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act, to be paid overtime for working more than 40 hours in a week. Before the federal government set rules for overtime, most employees worked longer hours, and millions of Americans worked six or seven days a week, as Chinese factory workers do today. Salaried workers also have the right to be paid a premium for overtime work, unless they fall into an exempt category as a professional, an administrator, or an executive. Exempt employees must be skilled and exercise independent judgment, or be a boss with employees to supervise. However, many companies have worked to get around these overtime rules by classifying employees like cooks, convenience store employees or restaurant workers as “managers,” “supervisors,” or “assistant managers or supervisors,” so that their employer can deny them overtime under this exception.

In May 2016, the Department of Labor issued its final rule establishing a new minimum salary threshold for the white-collar exemptions (executive, administrative and professional) under the Fair Labor Standards Act. This new threshold of $913 per week ($47,476 annualized) more than doubles the current minimum weekly salary threshold of $455 per week ($23,660 annualized). While that may seem like a huge increase, the old threshold level is only $2 a week above the poverty level for a family of four. Twenty-one states have filed suit to challenge this rule, citing the rule will force many businesses, including state and local governments, to unfairly and substantially increase their employment costs.

The old rule allowed companies to put employees on “salary” at a low rate and require them to work sometimes significant overtime. The fact that so many government entities are concerned about this new rule substantially increasing their employment costs underscores the extent to which even government entities have taken advantage of employees in this fashion. Can you imagine earning $25,000/year and having to work 50, 60 or 70 hours a week? Even at 50 hours a week, that equates to an hourly wage of only $8.01!

In the first year, the department estimates that the new rule may affect, in some manner, over 10 million workers who earn between $455/week and the new $913/week threshold.

The median worker has seen a wage increase of just 5 percent between 1979 and 2012, despite overall productivity growth of 74.5 percent (Mishel and Shierholz, 2013), according to the Economic Policy Institute. One reason Americans’ paychecks are not keeping pace with their productivity is that millions of middle-class and even lower-middle-class workers are working overtime and not getting paid for it. Before this rule change, the federal wage and hour law was out of date. This change purports to correct this modern day servitude that the law – for the last 30 years – has carved out a huge exception, allowing workers to be taken advantage of simply by assigning them a title and paying them a salary.

Sources:

Workers' Compensation Watch

Published by Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm

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Category Archives: Government

Why Immigration Policy Changes Probably Will Impact Workers Compensation

Workplace Safety Rules Could Be Reversed via Congressional Review Act

Workplace Safety and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chemical Exposure in Chicken Plants

Drug Formularies, Part 2: Pharmacy Benefit Managers and Drug Prices

More Takeaways from the Demise of the Oklahoma Option in Workers’ Compensation

Why Due Process Matters in Workers’ Compensation

Department of Labor Weighs In on New Age of Salary Servitude for ‘Executives’

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